I guess you technically don’t have to, but to me part of the point of using an open source tool is you can host it yourself and you don’t need to ask permission or apologize for using the service in a way the operator didn’t intend.
At this point, I host most of my own services. Especially if they’re federated.
You don’t have to host a matrix instance. Creating a room/space on the default matrix.org server is easy and free.
I guess you technically don’t have to, but to me part of the point of using an open source tool is you can host it yourself and you don’t need to ask permission or apologize for using the service in a way the operator didn’t intend.
At this point, I host most of my own services. Especially if they’re federated.
not everyone has the time or technical for running and operating their own infrastructure. it’s why most people stick to lemmy.ml, matrix.org, etc.